Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
“You must become the mighty dragon to defeat the knight,” I said, finding another wrapper mixed in with his bedding. “Suck in the fuel, man,” I commanded, half paying attention. “Suck it in!”
I heard his deep intake of breath.
“Now . . . fire!”
The man exhaled loudly, and while he was distracted I gathered up all the wrappers I could find. He had a couple others I didn’t recognize, other competitors probably, scant in comparison to those from Granny. His other trash came from food items or other living necessities. I gathered that up, too, before straightening out his bed clothes.
“Almost there!” My voice was lofty. “Seize the day. Suck in that fuel. You are mighty.”
I folded his rags, the scraps of cloth apparently being used as his clothes, and put them to the side.
“Fire!” I shouted.
I looked around for something larger than these few items, finding a tarp down the alley—and another person who’d been hunched, now following my instructions. My heart pinched.
“Suck in that fuel.” I made my way over to the second man, this one not nearly as animated as the first. He was near the end of his journey. “Are you okay?” I asked him softly so that the other man wouldn’t hear. If the other man thought about it, he’d render himself definitely not okay and all hell would break loose.
The hunched man looked up at me and I moved the lantern away a little so it didn’t blind him. His skin sagged and his eyes were dull as they looked through me, not at me. The torn clothing adorning his body hung from him, much too big but well-worn, as though he’d owned them when he’d had twice the body mass.
“Have you come to take me to the gods?” he asked in a frail and shaky voice.
I shook my head sadly, laying a hand on his shoulder. “The gods do not want you, yet. You have more life to live. Tell me, how can I help you?” I turned toward the standing man quickly. “Fuel, man! Suck in that fuel! If you don’t, they’ll get you.”
“Are you an angel?” the hunched man asked me, his eyes clouding a little.
“No,” I whispered, sparing a moment to shout, “Fire!” over my shoulder. My hand stayed on the hunched man’s shoulder and I spied a discarded wrapper within his things. The butterfly in the center taunted me. “Quite the opposite. I think I am the bringer of hell.”
The man’s eyes seemed to clear a little and looked over my face. “No,” he replied, his face stretching into a smile. “No,” he said again. “I see the light in you. You are hell’s nemesis.” He issued a wary sigh. “I think I’ll go to the gods now. Thank you for coming.”
With that, he closed his eyes and laid down, curled up on his makeshift bed. His pulse still beat, thank the gods. He’d just sleep.
“Suck it in,” I said as the man in front of me drifted off to sleep. “Fire!”
I stood, looking down the alley at the others, not paying attention to what was happening at this end. Who was helping them? Were they all taking Granny’s product?
My product?
A sinking realization had sweat beading along my brow.
“Can’t be,” I murmured, dread pitting in my stomach.
Weston had listened to me in the end. I’d never listened to him, so sure in my product and my relative innocence. I’d trusted Granny implicitly to handle my product with care.
Hadn’t Weston showed me that I couldn’t trust her at all? Not with my life, not with my wellbeing, not with an entire village of people. Why hadn’t I stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t trust her over him in this, either?
“Fuck,” I murmured, my chest suddenly tight.
Dread coiled in my belly, rapidly turning into threads of panic. I returned first to the standing man, who was now breathing deeply on his own and in the process of calming down. With gentle firmness, I directed him to the side of the alley and helped him hunker down on his pile of rags, his bones too sharp and his movements too clunky. This wasn’t something that had happened overnight. He’d been on a slow decline to this state for a while.
I covered him with the tarp I’d found, the smell a little musty but no worse than the man’s odor. He tried to push it off, but I held it down and then tucked the edges around him.
In a moment he stilled. His exhale was telling. The tarp started rising and falling with his breaths.
Granny had told me one time not to bother with the fail-safes, that no one else did something like that. I hadn’t listened and she hadn’t pushed because changing it would’ve taken time—a resource she hadn’t wanted me to waste.